


It’s the Pebble and the fucking Penguin oh my god

by Kokolo



Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Background Fred Dukes, Background Kitty Pride, Background Todd Tolansky, Background Wanda Maximoff, Brotherhood of Mutants, Dumb boys being dumb, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Inspired by The Pebble and the Penguin (1995), M/M, Marriage Proposal, Past Lancitty, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22619167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kokolo/pseuds/Kokolo
Summary: "Let’s stop seeing sex as the biggest thing you can do to show someone you love them. Everyone knows that the real way to show someone you love them is to find them a really cool rock. Not a diamond. Just a neat rock that you think they will enjoy.Or, Lance gives Pietro a rock...
Relationships: Lance Alvers/Pietro Maximoff
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	It’s the Pebble and the fucking Penguin oh my god

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on my Tumblr](https://whattheficery.tumblr.com/post/125227076639/fic-its-the-pebble-and-the-fucking-penguin-oh-my) July 27, 2015.
> 
> Edited by the ever lovely Mugsandpugs <3

"Hey look at this."

Pietro raised his head from the cushion it had been resting on. Lance, lounging in the nearby armchair, reached out with his fist closed and waited for Pietro to move. He didn’t. His head fell back onto the cushion, and Lance’s hand fell back to his side, but he still looked at the speedster expectantly, waiting for him. It was enough to get Pietro to shift on the couch, but not outright move.

"What?"

"Look.” Lance stressed. He pushed off the armchair and raised his fist again, and just as Pietro flinched to curl up and hide his head from some cheap shot, Lance grabbed his wrist and put something in his hand. “Here. Hold it."

"What the hell, Lance?"

Utterly distracted (at the last ten minutes, of course), Pietro abandoned his show and withdrew his hand, sitting up. Lance watched him, hands in his pockets, as he opened his clenched fist and found a half-palm sized stone. Just a regular, smooth river rock. It was even a stereotypical grey color. It was warm in his palm, probably from Lance’s own hand. He’d been sitting fiddling with something for most of the afternoon, and that something turned out to be a stone. _Fucking rock mutant nerd._

"Isn't it cool?" Lance asked him, still watching.

"I mean I guess? It's a rock." Pietro held it between his thumb and forefinger, out enough so Lance could take his little treasure back. But Lance didn’t. He swallowed and looked between the rock and Pietro’s face.

"You can have it if you want." Lance told Pietro, hands still in his pockets.

"Okay. Uh. Thanks.” Pietro shrugged and pocketed the stone. “Why are you looking at me like that?"

“Nothing.” Lance muttered quickly, he returned to his chair, slumping in it like he’d taken the world off his shoulders. Pietro watched him for a time. There was something more to this weird rock exchange. He just wasn’t entirely sure what yet. If it ended in a prank there would be hell to pay, Pietro decided. He’d start by stoning Lance with his own stupid rock.

  
\---

Following the rock-gift, The Brotherhood house became strange. Not bad, not better (why would it ever get _better?),_ but strange. Lance, for some reason, was significantly more mellow. As a result, everyone else was significantly more alarmed. No one was more on edge than Pietro, who was usually on edge to begin with, and also potentially the reason Lance was acting so weird. Not that anyone knew that part yet. Pietro was keeping quiet about it. So was Lance, it turned out.

A few days post gift, Pietro found himself back in the living room, sharing the space with everyone, with the exception of Lance, who’d gone out to find food or rip someone off or get gas for the Jeep. Pietro’s nerves, already frayed, drove him to pacing. Wanda watched him carefully from her place by the bookshelf.

"Yo what's with Lance man?" Todd finally asked, peeling up the edge of the coffee table.

"I'm not sure." Pietro said, smacking the rotted wood away from Toad’s hand. “Quit it.”

"He's been really happy since the other day." Fred observed. He turned a page of his comic book. "You do anything with him, Pietro? Like beat up a bill collector?"

“Yeah man.” Toad added. “When Fred an’ I got back from the mall he was already on cloud nine. Did he say somethin’? Get back with Kitty?”

"No but like -” Pietro stopped his pacing and dug the stone out from his pocket. “He gave me this rock. And was weirdly excited about it."

Todd snorted from the couch, and that small movement had him slipping off onto the floor. PIetro darted into his freed up spot. He set his feet on the edge of the coffee table, taking up enough space that Toad didn’t have room to squeeze on anymore. Pietro looked the rock over in his hands, sliding his fingers over the smooth edges. He glanced at Fred and Todd and Wanda, all of which gave the rock no second glance. There was no way there was something unearthly or special about it if no one, especially Wanda, couldn’t see it. But then why had Lance been so goddamn eager to make him keep it? Pietro’s leg bounced on the edge of the table while he thought, his mind whizzing everywhere, trying to pick up the pieces of a puzzle he didn’t remember starting.

The three other mutants regarded Pietro’s thousand-yard stare with a note of concern. Pietro barely noticed. It clicked, suddenly. Lance had been fidgeting and working up the nerve to get him to take the stupid rock all afternoon and then he finally did and the _look_ on his face after was like Pietro gave him the moon in return. It fit. For the love of all things mutated _it fit_ but Pietro couldn’t understand _why_ it made so much sense.

"Guys I think I just married Lance by accident."

  
\---

Pietro had vacated the living room and took up pacing in the second floor hallway. No one followed him, but he could hear them down there, talking. About him, no doubt. About his conclusion. They’d said their piece before he’d left, because the rock weighed him down so suddenly he couldn’t escape fast enough. 

  
“You’re serious.” Wanda had broached. She even looked up from her book to examine her brother. “You can’t be. Neither one of you can be this stupid.”

"I thought it was supposed to be a pretty rock. Like one from the jewelry store." Fred said slowly, mostly focused on his comic still.

Toad had shifted around and scratched his head and asked, "So do we call you dad or-?"

Laughter rippled up the steps and Pietro bristled. Every muscle in him demanded he run down and kick whoever dared laugh at him, but the last thing he wanted to do was fight, especially around Wanda, who wouldn’t hesitate to hex them all into the next dimension. She already thought he was being erratic. She’d hexed him into a freezer for less. Either way, he’d probably fuck it up somehow. There was a lot on his mind right then. A lot of it that couldn’t really be explained well, but _had_ to have an explanation. And not the one he came up with.

Another bout of laughter floated up from the living room and Pietro couldn’t take it. He zipped into his room and looked for something to ground his thoughts and block out the noise. Pietro flickered between his bookshelf, his dresser, his wardrobe - arranging and rearranging everything he could get his hands on. In the process, he tried shoving the stupid rock somewhere, hiding it and hopefully every other problem that came with it. Each and every time, however, Pietro’s new hiding spot proved unsatisfactory, and he dug it back out, holding it in his hand while he slipped from place to place.

He felt like he was going crazy trying to assign meaning to something he was probably blowing out of proportion. There was no way Lance wanted to marry him. There was no way Lance’s _attempt_ to marry him would be to give him a stupid rock. Lance was dumb sometimes, but Pietro didn’t think he was that stupid. That would mean he was just as dumb, accepting like he did.

Fred was the first to come around from the chuckle fest downstairs. He trudged up the stairs and into his room, then back out, holding a different comic book to read. Before he could head back down, he stopped outside of Pietro’s door. Pietro pretended to ignore him, fiddling with things on his dresser, arranging the items there at speeds only he could detect. But Fred stood there, shuffling his feet, waiting to be noticed but staying outside the threshold, like Pietro warned them all to do.

“Yes Fred?” Pietro asked, attempting to be civil (and get rid of him as painlessly as possible).

"Did… did you actually want to marry him, Pietro?"

"What? No Fred. Don't be stupid."

"So give him back the rock."

Pietro hesitated. "… no."

"Why not?"

Again, he hesitated to answer. The stone, now warm, burned his palm. "… I like it."

"But that means you're kinda married."

"It does not mean we’re married!” Pietro cried. “I just like the stupid rock okay!”

“Okay.” Fred said. “But if you don’t want to be married, maybe you should give it back.”

“Why?”

“In this state, it’s a gift given in contemplation of marriage. If the marriage contract isn’t completed it goes back to the giver.”

“I second that, yo.” Toad said, bouncing onto the landing behind Fred. “Been watchin’ lots of court TV. Which reminds me, we should take Kelly to court over discrimination. It’s a civil rights lawsuit in the making, yo!”

Pietro ran off before Toad could educate him anymore on daytime TV law. Unfortunately, running only drove him into a bigger problem - rather the source of the Brotherhood’s collective discomfort. Lance collided with the Jeep’s quarter panel on impact, and Pietro barked out some half-formed word, staggering backwards. The rock flew out of his hand, skittering across the cracked pavement, and before he knew what he was doing, Pietro found himself on his knees, grabbing it up.

“Hey watch it.” Lance grumbled. He held bags in his hand, lifting them to inspect the contents through the plastic. “This is dinner for the next month.”

“That’s it?” Pietro got himself up off the floor, dusting off his jeans. “You know we live with The Blob, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll make it work.” Lance rolled his shoulder and sniffed. “Did I miss anything?”

“No. Nope. Nothing. You know how it is.” Pietro rose his arms up to shrug, opened palmed, and suddenly abandoned that motion, realizing he still had Lance’s rock in his hand. “Same old boring everything.”

“Uh-huh.” Lance’s eyes flickered downward toward Pietro’s hand, and Pietro flickered his hand behind his back, clutching the rock so hard it dug into the backs of his knuckles. “Gimme a hand with these?”

“Sure.”

Quick as ever, Pietro pocketed the stone in his back pocket and reached out to grab the bags around Lance’s arms. Lance eyed him, but raised his hands up so Pietro could gather the plastic loops in his fist. Pietro tried not to slide his hands too much against Lance’s skin as he plucked the bags and loaded them onto his own arms.

“You know, I meant the ones in the truck.” Lance told him carefully. Some strange smile ghosted around his lips and Pietro felt like the rock in his pocket was the weight of a mountain.

“Right. Well I have these now so… I’ll be heading in.”

Pietro sped off without another word, amazed his legs could carry him. The bags landed somewhere on the kitchen floor, and Pietro landed somewhere in the vicinity of his bed, pacing for the remainder of the night.

  
\----

Following Lance and Pietro’s pseudo-engagement (and a high speed kick to the solar plexus whenever Todd mentioned the word), the initial strangeness leveled out. Lance was still more easygoing than the Brotherhood was used to, but he began to tear his hair out over bills again and make the walls and plaster rain down on the residents of the boarding house whenever he was pissed.

More importantly, he was no different with Pietro. He never was, Pietro realized. Even after he’d taken Lance’s rock, Lance made no move to be more physically affectionate or lovey-dovey. He calmed down and stopped trying to cave the house in, sure, but that was basically it. He smiled a little more, maybe, when he thought Pietro wasn’t looking, but nothing changed on Lance’s end. He’d always been the more human of the two, for a lack of a better word. In fact, comradery was something far more important to him than it was to almost everyone else in the Brotherhood. Between pats on the back and friendly elbows and nagging at them all to eat, he was practically the team mom, and had been from Pietro’s arrival.

The only thing that really changed about their relationship had been _Pietro._ The whole thing terrified him for reasons that even he couldn’t pin down. He let Toad take shotgun and stayed squished in the back with Freddy -and that was when he rode in the Jeep at all. He went alone to scour grocery stores and pick up things they needed but couldn’t quite afford. He took his own personal training a lot more seriously, traveling across state lines and back whenever Lance decided to leave his room. He ran from Lance more often than not, getting messages from Toad or Freddy, when they remembered to give them. And it was all because he was assigning meaning to a stupid rock.

Wanda had pulled him aside more than once (forcibly, more often than not) and demanded he stop being such a baby about the whole thing. Todd and Fred were muttering about the Acolytes. Even Lance was beginning to notice his frequent absences. Not that he could ever pin Quicksilver down, but he was starting to worry.

“Either ditch the rock,” She’d said, holding him in place, “Or give it back. But don’t keep it. It’s upsetting you, which is upsetting all of us, including me.”

“I didn’t know you cared, Wanda.”

She’d blasted him out of the room after that, rock and all.

Injuries aside, getting rid of the rock and shaking his unease was easier said than done. More than once he stood over a river or at the edge of some dense tree line or near some shit-talking human and contemplated chucking the thing as far away from him as possible. And every time Pietro couldn’t bring himself to do it. He dug the stupid thing out of his pocket and held it in his hand and even reared back to throw as hard as he could, but he always stopped himself. Part of him realized he was being stupid. He could get rid of the rock if he wanted. But it was also just a rock. He didn’t _need_ to get rid of it because it didn’t mean anything. Another part had grown used to it, like a security blanket of sorts. Having it in his pocket curbed his temper. Idly playing with it diffused some of his energy so he didn’t break anymore windows trying to run up the side of the house. Meditation had always taken too long for him, but the rock grounded him without having to sit like a pretzel and wait for time to pass.

So Pietro had yet to get rid of the rock. So what?

He’d left the house again in a fit of anxiety and run halfway across town to get some air in the nearest park. The rock had come with him, and it stayed in his palm, the same boring gray oval it had been at day one. Pietro wondered idly how it hadn’t crumbled yet with all his fretting. He turned it over in his hand, slid it between his fingers, and thought. If he let it drop out of his hand, right here, under one of the worn benches, no one would be the wiser. It would just cease to be his problem. It would live out it’s nice little rock life in complete stillness and no one would worry or care about it anymore. Especially not Pietro.

"Like what's that?"

Pietro stiffened, closing his hand around the rock and hiding it behind his back. His recognition for that voice caught up with him a moment later, and Pietro relaxed. Kitty Pryde was hardly a threat, especially out in broad daylight in Bayville. Why she wanted to talk to him of all mutants was a mystery. But Pietro was up for some distraction that didn’t live in his pocket. A shame, though, that it still reminded him of Lance.

"What's what- this?” Pietro mentioned casually, holding the rock out between his fingers. “Some stupid rock Lance gave me."

"Like he gave one to you too?"

Pietro choked. “What?"

Kitty helped herself to sit nearby, and Pietro looked at her like she’d brought Toad’s slime with her. She smiled at him with her usual sunny charm. For whatever reason, she was trying to be civil. Mutant solidarity, Pietro supposed, had been drilled into her by Professor Baldy.

"Yeah, like when we were dating he gave me a rock for like, no reason." Kitty said, craning her head to get a better look at it. Pietro clutched it in his hand and drew it to his chest out of reflex. “I figured it was like, part of his collection or something.”

"Was it this one?" Pietro heard himself asking. It was suddenly very important that he didn’t get some hand-me-down rock from Kitty Pryde.

"No a different one.” She answered easily, and Pietro felt relief course through him for some unnamed reason he promptly ignored. “I lost it a while ago, though. Kinda funny. He must like you."

"Haha. Yeah. Real funny."

Kitty’s nose scrunched up in what Pietro figured was concern. “You okay?”

“Fine Pryde.” Pietro snapped. Again he was clutching the rock in his fist and to his chest and this was getting ridiculous _it was a fucking rock._ “Fine.”

Finally offended, Kitty collected herself and stood up. He muttered something that might have been goodbye that Pietro ignored, watching her leave through glances. Pietro waited, still, utterly conflicted. Lance had given Kitty a rock. That more or less solidified the whole proposal thing. Lance had given Kitty a rock like his. Lance _had_ been serious about being really into Kitty. Lance gave Pietro a rock. Things connected in his brain but Pietro keeps flickering away from the final conclusion. He flung himself into something familiar instead; unmitigated rage.

How dare he give Kitty a rock.

How fucking _dare_ Lance give Kitty Pryde - their enemy - a rock!

  
\---

Lance nearly fell off his bed when Pietro kicked the door open.

“Christ Pietro-”

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?"

As was usual for Pietro, he started his fights somewhere in the middle of the confrontation. The rest of the Brotherhood, too slow to keep up, scrambled for footing while Pietro continued to rage, having mentally forged the miles of warpath, surefooted and mad as hell. Lance was alarmed to say the least, but he gave Pietro his full attention, getting up off his bed, hopelessly confused and ready to guard if it came to an actual fistfight. That said, Lance’s confusion melted into a goofy smile when Pietro unearthed the rock.

"You gave one to Kitty!" Pietro shouted, brandishing the small stone as threateningly as possible. "To an X-man?!”

"Things were good then. I thought so, anyway."

"You gave one to _her_?!"

"Yeah. A while ago. She lost it. Or just got rid of it.” Lance shrugged off the ache in his voice and met Pietro’s fury with a genuine smile. “You still have it though."

"That’s not the poi- whuah?"

"You still have yours."

"… yeah. Yeah I do. Uh…"

Suddenly out of steam, Pietro went lax. He shut his mouth and cleared his throat. The stone lowered and disappeared into his pocket before he thought better of it. The heat from his anger was still burning him, but underneath he cooled. Lance was still staring, and to Pietro's utter horror, he felt his stomach flip.

“You hung on to it.” Lance continued. Pietro scraped together enough malice to glare and keep him from stepping forward, and Lance backed off, sitting back down.

“Yeah.” Pietro muttered. “I still have your stupid rock. So what? It’s not like we’re-”

“Married?” Lance put his hands up again when Pietro's head snapped up to stare. “Easy ‘Tro. I overheard Todd picking on you before you sent him flying. We’re going to need to fix that wall eventually.”

“What does it mean?” Pietro blurted. “Is it- are we-?”

Lance shrugged. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Don’t give me that vague bullshit, Alvers.”

“I’m not.” Lance glanced down at the pocket with the stone and Pietro’s fingers twitched toward it, ready to throw the stupid thing in his face. “Why didn’t you throw it away yet? If it’s making you so worried.”

“Because I like the fucking rock okay! Why is everyone trying to make me get rid of it? It’s my fucking rock!”

Pietro balled his hands into fists, trying to grasp at the last bits of his anger before they left him, but he was too late. He felt his shoulders sag. His heart hammered beneath his ribs. His skin still burned. This was not going at all like he planned, but when he tried to backtrack and reroute his plan, Pietro couldn’t find where he’d even started from. Why had he been so angry about Kitty’s rock? Why did he want to kick Lance’s ass from here to the county line? Lance stood up again and Pietro wanted nothing more than to run out of the house, regroup, figure out why he was so frustrated and put it into actual words but that damn rock was so heavy he could feel it crushing his leg.

“You don’t have to keep it.” Lance told him. “And it doesn’t have to mean anything to you.”

“To me.” Pietro narrowed his eyes. “And what does it mean to _you,_ Lance? Huh? What does it mean? I’m sick of making myself crazy trying to think like you, boulders for brains. So clue me in.”

“It means I love you.” Lance shrugged and looked at the floor, the same bashful face he’d had when Pietro asked him what the hell he was doing giving him the stone in the first place. “You mean a lot to me.”

Pietro’s mind scrambled for something to follow up that strange, strangled sound that fell out of his mouth but nothing came. It was humiliating. Lance was hardly eloquent, but he managed to knock Pietro’s rebuttal into a fissure and close the very earth around it. The ease with which he spoke sent Pietro scrambling, searching for something, anything but the simple meaning Lance had all but spelled out for him. At a complete loss for anything sound to base an argument on, Pietro latched onto Lance’s drunken affections, his proclaimed concern and care for everyone else in the Brotherhood.

“Where’s Todd’s then?” Pietro sputtered, grabbing for the damned rock and jabbing it into Lance’s chest. “And Fred’s? Wanda’s? Gonna leave my sister out of this? She’s gonna hex you through the-”

“I love em too, don’t get me wrong.” Lance said hastily. “But uh… you’re special. Look, Pietro- I don’t have much. None of us do. And I really never did, growing up. So… I can’t really give a lot. I never really was able to. So I figured this would be a good enough substitute until I did find something. And it things never really got better so… rocks.”

Again, Pietro was at a loss for words. Lance was unfairly winning what should have been the battle he had every upper hand in. He’d been the one to confront Lance. He’d come in guns blazing, ready to choke the stupid rockhead. Lance was not supposed to think faster than he was. He wasn’t supposed to have a better handle on words. Mutation or not, he wasn’t supposed to be able to rip the earth out from under him and send him reeling. Pietro swallowed hard. The words escaped him before he could stop them.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah. It… it really does sound dumb when you say it out loud, like that.” Lance worried his lip and held out his hand, palm up. “I’ll just take-”

“No.” Pietro clasped the rock between his hands and darted back.

“No?”

“It’s my fucking rock Alvers you can’t take it back.” Pietro carefully stuffed it in his pocket. “No take backs.”

Lance laughed, his whole face breaking out into a smile. Pietro felt the heat prickle on the back of his neck and in his hand. He checked the stored the stone in his back pocket and wiped his hands on his pants, trying to regain some aloofness. Lance could wear the goofy affection all he wanted. It didn’t look half bad on him. Pietro shook the thought from his head and grounded himself in Lance’s room near Lance and his bed and Lance’s gentle look and then needed to hold his head to keep from physically shaking more thoughts out of his mind.

“It means a lot that you kept it.” Lance murmured, heedless of Pietro’s thoughts speeding by. “That you’re keeping it, P.”

“Yeah. Whatever. I’m not marrying you.”

“Fine. Civil union then.”

“Lance-”

“I’m joking! Joking. Calm down.” Lance laughed again, visibly soothed by Pietro’s decision not to stone him. “It’s not anything you don’t want it to be. It’s just a gift. A stupid gift, I guess. But it’s yours.”

“Never took you for the symbolic type, Alvers.”

“Yeah well.” Lance kicked at lint on his carpet. “Never took you for type to be wooed by a stone.”

At that, Pietro scoffed. He steeled himself up some and shook his head, about to let Lance know that, no, he was not wooed by a stupid rock. The rock was the least woo-able thing Lance could have possibly done, and in fact it had caused so much turmoil that it was a miracle that it wasn’t used as a projectile already.

And then Pietro’s thoughts crashed into something solid and warm and rough around the edges. Lance’s hand, to be precise. Somehow he’d gotten close enough to reach out and trace the edge of Pietro’s cheek with the backs of his knuckles. His hand was too loose to be a fist, but Pietro still flinched.

“What are you doing?” Pietro asked, struggling to keep his eyes on Lance’s face. _Not on his arm not his hand stay still don’t run it’s okay he’s okay this is normal keep looking at his face goddamnit..._

“Nothing, if you don’t want me to.” Lance dropped his hand back to his side, then buried both in his pockets. “Look, it’s- like I said, it doesn’t have to be anything. I just wanted to get it off my chest. I didn’t know you’d freak out like you did. I’d have explained better. I just - I got a little nervous.” He unearthed one of his hands to thumb his nose, looking down. “If the rock is the most physical you want to get, fine. I get it. I don’t mind. I just wanted you to know. You don’t have to give me a rock in exchange either, so to speak.”

“Why?”

“It’s not always a good idea to wait. Shit changes. People leave. You- we know that.”

Lance looked contrite enough for both of them, so Pietro didn’t press. The threat of his father loomed somewhere distant, Mystique somewhere closer, and Bayville closer still. The rest of the Brotherhood wasn’t so much a distinct worry as an amorphous problem. There was too much at stake here. Leaders weren’t supposed to choose favorites. Inequality bred ill-will among teams. Furthermore, Pietro had always been told to guard himself. It was supposed to make him impenetrable. But Lance’s stupid little stone struck a chord through all the walls. And here was Lance, pouring his heart into a little pebble Pietro could send whizzing through his skull, if he tried hard enough.

“Okay.” Pietro muttered. “Okay. I think I get it. I think I get it now.”

“Yeah?” Lance asked, maybe too hopefully, because he reeled back. “And?”

“I get it.” Pietro repeated. “But I don’t know what to do about it. It’s still dumb. Don’t you worry about that. But I’ll… I don’t think I’ll lose it. The rock.”

“Thank you.”

Lance stepped forward and clapped his hand on Pietro’s shoulder. And then he let go. Pietro eyed him, and Lance shrugged. The standstill had Pietro shifting his weight back and forth, and Lance looked toward the door.

“You don’t have to stay.” He said, and Pietro felt like he should mention that there was more than one way to take that phrase, but he left it alone. “I’m actually gonna go for a ride, if you want to come.”

“I’m going to pass.”

“I figured.” Lance smiled at him, fondly, and then turned to grab his keys and walk out. “Later, ‘Tro.”

With that, Lance left Pietro in his room alone with his thoughts. They filled up the space where Lance stood in an instant, buzzing around, the same familiar whine he’d grown used to. The sudden void reminded him that he still didn’t understand a lot of what Lance said, why he said it, even how he was able to process all of it so easily. He wondered why it felt right and wrong all at once, why it hurt that Kitty might have some much stupider version of his rock anywhere in her possession, why the idea of the Brotherhood not always being right where he left them in the crumbling old house upset him so much. Most of all, Pietro wondered what kind of person could so casually admit their love and then just as easily walk away.

“So.” Wanda said from the doorway. “You still have it?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he give you a weird present or was he getting dating advice from Adelie penguins?”

“No, yeah.” Pietro shrugged. “I married him.”

“Mazel Tov.” Wanda said dryly, throwing her hands up. “You are all horrible idiots. Why did I agree to stay here?”

“You’re not getting invited to the reception.”

Pietro spun to stick his tongue out at her and only found her coattails fluttering past the threshold. Her sudden appearance, no doubt, would prompt Toad to come crawling out of the woodwork. Fred was usually not far behind, hexes and the promise of food notwithstanding. Pietro felt for his stone. He wasn’t quite ready to confirm with them yet. Maybe, when he caught up with Lance, they could figure that part out together.

**Author's Note:**

> This is such absolute garbage I made a fucking Pebble and the Penguin Xmen Evo AU I’m trash I’m sorry goodbye everybody this is my life now this is what I do with my time.


End file.
